He saw an abandoned trailer, then uncovered a surveillance network | Hacker News Reader

He saw an abandoned trailer, then uncovered a surveillance network

calmatters.org

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Funny, you can plainly see them in street view linked from the EFF map...

https://maps.app.goo.gl/bGcDQ8v8YhvN3f1q7

Here is one in a construction barrel

https://maps.app.goo.gl/bakw7KpzRjSuqpwY6

Well, there's a reminder to donate to the EFF again!

In Canada all the police cars seem to have automated license plate readers these days.

This article explains there was a 2016 law where California won't share local police plate reader data with the feds, so they made a deal in 2024 where Caltrans (dept of transportation) will let Border Patrol pay for it themselves on roads near border crossing like San Diego County.

Is it illegal to put big cardboard boxes weighed down with rocks in front of these cameras? Asking for a friend.

Flock came to my town recently and I keep daydreaming about drones that can spray/drop paint.

There might be people in your town who own all-black clothing and face masks.

I hope to operate one of these networks. Maybe I should apply to Y Combinator. Do they take applications that are too similar to previous applicants?

I've heard those trailers contain 15 lbs of copper wire each.

Scrap metal and sellable parts as well. Most likely a SIM card you can get a bunch of free internet out of too.

won't they able able to track you down if you start using the SIM though?

They can track the locations where you use that card, and the locations where you use the phone the card was in, before and after the card was in it.

Take this information as you will.

ETA: "use" means "have a battery inserted"

Stick it into a smartphone, duct tape it to an ICE vehicle.

It'd be interesting to see what endpoints they submit the data to...

Tell all of the meth heads and junkies in town, these trailers will disappear faster than Stephen Miller can utter a racist epithet.

> “If you’re not doing anything illegal, why worry about it?” said long-time Jacumba resident Allen Stanks, 70.

Glad to see they dug out the most intelligent person to react to this information. It's also incredibly funny because the opposite should also apply to the government; if they're not doing anything illegal then they should have no need to hide their local surveillance network inside of abandoned trailers or other items. Just another reason to toss on the pile for dismantling CBP.

I loved Mr. Stanks follow up of "Privacy?! Why, you post your food on Facebook!". Because what I had for supper and where I've travelled during the day are on exactly the same level of privacy and concern. I have to assume that in the reporter's attempt to have a voice from the pro side and the con side, the best they could find was "if you're not doing anything illegal...".

It's the privacy equivalent of "She was dressed skimpy in that part of town"

If people don't have anything to hide ask them how their marriage is and when the last time was they met their mistress, since they drive by there way too often for not having one nearby that location. That line of questioning usually shuts people up, replace response with financials/location/calls/etc when needed. (I know it's a reductio ad absurdum)

that's kinda silly because someone may deduce where you've been from a photo at a restaurant

I swear editors intentionally go with the dumbest takes to get rage engagement.

I don't like it but I can kind of understand hiding it. People change their behavior if it's obvious.

Had an amateur radio friend tell me about a time he found something transmitting interference that looked like a pole mounted transformer but it was upside down and not connected to anything. He reported it to the FCC and it vanished in a couple of days.

Isn't this the expected outcome when someone reports a device that interferes with communications? They find the owner and the device is fixed or removed.

> “If you’re not doing anything illegal, why worry about it?” said long-time Jacumba resident Allen Stanks, 70.

I wonder if Mr Stanks has curtains on his windows… After all, if you’ve got nothing to hide…

Let's suppose Mr Stanks is one of those rare but not altogether uncommon birds that strides out every morning, stark naked, to organically water his hydrangeas.

And..?

Mr Stanks curtains isn't the greatest argument or observation here.

We don't need to cater our argument to outliers

Speak for _yourself_ and don't invoke all of us in your Royal We.

It was a poor rejoiner on Usenet in the 1980s and it's just as weak today.

The arguments for personal privacy across the globe are stronger than the US prudish resisting US prurience.

I assume every vehicle has been tracked for decades now. Remember when they simplified the design of license plates to make them easier for cameras to read? Why they feel the need to hide it though.

In the UK: "A record for all vehicles passing by a camera is stored, including those for vehicles that are not known to be of interest at the time of the read. At present ANPR cameras nationally, submit on average around 60 million ANPR ‘read’ records to national ANPR systems daily." [1] (ANPR = Automatic Number Plate Recognition)

The data is kept for 12 months. So basically if you get onto the police radar for whatever reason they can roughly see how you used your car, and others they know you had access to, in the last 12 months (just saying, hum, hum).

[1] https://www.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/rs/road-...

So I'll say two things to that:

1) If your car is stolen, suddenly none of this capability exists, or is inaccessible to police for some reason. No one can actually just type in your reg and see where it was last seen, seemingly, even though it would be an easy way to locate criminals. And if you think well, thieves will just change the plates - no, stolen vehicles are frequently recovered on their original plates.

2) I keep saying various FB Police pages posting "we found this car X without MOT or tax, last time it was taxed in 2023!" so like...it's been driving for 3 years without anyone noticing? What are all those ANPR cameras for then??

This is the police "prioritising".

Regarding your second point, I don't think you'd go scotch free but the police wouldn't bother coming to the registered keeper's address and attempt to seize the car. I believe you'd simply get automatic fines for no MOT or no insurance (plus penalty points).

So that's that as long as you don't tweet tendencious things because then they might send several cars to arrest you /s

Probably to deter vandalism of the kind that a number of other people in this thread are talking about doing.

Free trailer

Free SIM card, free NUC running the ALPR DSP software, free Victron solar battery charger/power supply equipment…

I'm sort of curious where the law stands on this (I am not a lawyer).

Since it has a license plate on it, it in theory displays some ownership info. Is that enough for me to say, "it's clearly not mine now"? If it didn't, does that give me any right to take something off a public roadway?

Obviously, I know that the letter of the law, and what actually will be enforced, are two different things. Taking something that belongs to CBP would almost definitely be prosecuted in this case, regardless of whether it's legally fair game to do so.

It appears that I can't direct-link to it, but look up case 19S-CR-00528 on public.courts.in.gov - this was a case in which the Supreme Court of Indiana overturned an earlier ruling that removing a GPS monitoring device from your own car, when you weren't aware it was there, was theft.

I think its the same as stealing a bike or a car parked on the street. I don't know the subtleties but I don't think you can presume something is abandoned merely for being left on the street?

california blocked sharing police ALPR data with the feds. so border patrol built their own network on state highway infrastructure instead. the workaround is always simpler than the law it routes around.

What are the odds Palantir have something to do with this.

99 point 9 recurring, but that wasn't new information.

[flagged]

> “Everyone is talking about privacy, OK. Stop putting everything on Facebook. ‘Here’s a picture of my food.’ Who cares?” said Stanks.

Lol, this is just an old guy that wants to say something, _anything_ to the world

An old guy who doesn't understand the difference between the state surveilling everything you do, and you volunteering some photographs to the world.

"You're in public space, you can't assume any kind of privacy here. Just don't go out."

This is perhaps a more common opinion than you think. Making it easy to catch bad guys is enough reason. I don't know how to effectively convince someone that the ease of law enforcement comes at the expense of liberty, which so many of the aforementioned opinion-holders also claim to be concerned about. I feel like it should be self-evident, that law enforcement and liberty are mutually exclusive, and that we have things like warrants to allow that infringement on liberty in very narrow circumstances. Dragnet surveillance is warrant-less evidence gathering.

> This is perhaps a more common opinion than you think.

Oh, I know it's a common opinion. That's why I'm so upset about it.

> the ease of law enforcement comes at the expense of liberty, which so many of the aforementioned opinion-holders also claim to be concerned about.

Because they're convinced that because they have nothing to hide, the law will never turn against them.

>Because they're convinced that because they have nothing to hide, the law will never turn against them.

Yeah, this is a tough one to counter for me. Trying to identify a specific thing they do that may become of interest to a specific abuse of law enforcement.

I mean, one thing you can look at is news stories about the police grabbing the wrong person, trying to find someone who's as much like them as possible - but any example can be rationalized away.

The Jews in Amsterdam had nothing to hide ... until they did.

Do you give everybody your tax returns? No? Then you have something to hide.

Do you give everybody your phone records? No? Then you have something to hide.

Do you give everybody your web history? No? Then you have something to hide.

etc.

> Do you give everybody

The easy counter-argument to this, which Mr. Stanks alludes to, is that there's a difference between giving everyone data, and giving law enforcement data.

But Jews-in-Amsterdam is a pretty good example.

It's interesting. No one is a 100% law-abiding citizen. You can see this in traffic, for example, when a driver gets upset about pedestrians ignoring red lights, while they themselves are driving a few miles per hour over the speed limit and have the number right in front of them. The transgressions of others should always be severely punished. One's own transgressions are minor trifles that are not worth mentioning, or small privileges that one naturally claims. And when one is penalized a little for one's own misconduct, e.g., with a fine, one acts as if one were a victim of fascist repression.

It is self-evident, and they are doublethinking. You can test this by telling them that police should be required to wear always-on body cams. See how they react to that.

The answer is always "because law enforcement is usually doing something illegal"

Yeah ask this guy how he’d feel if a different party were in power and doing this.

An extra-ominous comment with the numbers in your username.

Just ask him to show you his bank accounts / unrestricted access to phone / camera in bedroom. It is always funny to see these people bend into pretzels trying to justify why you should not see how much money is on their bank accounts while you are just repeating their own mantra that if they did not do anything illegal, why they are worried about it?

The easy counter-argument to this, which Mr. Stanks alludes to, is that there's a difference between giving everyone data, and giving law enforcement data.

There's no expectation of privacy in public areas. That's been the law of the land now for a long time.

>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Also:

>No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Have been the law for a long time too and yet…

There’s a difference between happening to be captured on camera if there’s a camera in a public place and having a government agency identify and track you and your vehicle across hundreds of miles of travel.

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